The Pacer
by AlienZombies
Summary: The important thing is to push on, even with things holding you back, tripping you up. NICKXELLIS


If you want to know the reason that I've not uploaded any new stories lately, it's because I caught mononucleosis and I've been well out of sorts. However! I have returned and I come bearing fic, so please forgive me.

This one is un-beta'd and I'm a little rusty from sleeping for like 800 hours in a row, so if it sucks I blame that haha. Please tell me what you think! Because you're the best. :D

And that's about it!

**The Pacer**

The day was soggy, miserable. The air was thick with unfettered heat, eased by no breeze. It was stagnant and wet and hung close to the skin. But there was solace in the fact that this day's trek led down an expanse of mostly uninhabited highway. The traffic blockages outside the major cities were behind them now for another fifty miles or so and the pavement gave them a flat surface that eased the pressure on Coach's injured knee. It also allowed them to load up a wagon full of supplies that could be brought with them. Rough terrain like unpaved swamplands made carrying large loads impossible.

For Ellis, it felt good not to have the weight of the shotgun in his arms. He would not have to tote a weapon until he was on sentry in another two hours. Nick kept pace beside him, hands in his pockets, eyes fixed on the movement of his feet over the asphalt. Part of Ellis knew that Nick wouldn't appreciate his proximity – not after what had happened. But for now, anyway, Nick seemed mostly oblivious to him; he seemed fixated by the blur of the road passing beneath him.

"You're going to walk into somethin'," Ellis intoned to him. He forgot to check the volume of his voice and it cut through the silence hard.

Nick gave no outward sign that he had heard him. He didn't even look up. "I like it this way," he said.

"Why?"

"None of your business."

"I was just askin' a friendly question."

"You're always asking questions," Nick replied, but he looked up finally. His eyebrows frowned together as he focused on the horizon. "Shit, it's a long way."

The road went on as far as the eye could see. It seemed to touch the end of the world.

"I don't mind the walk," Ellis said good-naturedly. He wanted to keep the silence at bay.

"You're wearing sneakers," Nick answered. He had been wearing dress shoes for a long while now and they seemed to be causing him pain, though he refused to take them off. When he walked, they clicked faintly.

The sun was still settled in an easy place between sunrise and midday. A few fat, lazy clouds sat down on the line of the horizon and would not budge. Ellis was a little worried that it was so hot in the day already, and it wasn't even noon. Without stopping, he stripped of his sweat-soaked T-shirt and laid it across the lip of the wagon Rochelle was pushing. It would soon be Nick's turn to push it.

Ellis found himself losing and gaining on Nick in turns as they walked, not because Nick was erratic but because Ellis wasn't used to walking for long distances. Sometimes it seemed like he could walk another twelve miles without so much as a leg cramp; and at other times, he only wanted to lay down on the side of the road like a dog killed by a passing truck. Nick put one foot in front of the other with that perfect mechanical pace that spoke of many long walks over many long miles. Ellis had never asked before about Nick's past as a traveler (and he would probably never have the opportunity again, having blown it that night not too many nights ago), but even then this automatic persistence seemed born of a childhood full of walking anywhere, away from somewhere, the simple act of walking.

Ellis had always been a runner in childhood. He survived in the short bursts of energy he experienced with vivid color and life; Nick had the uncanny ability to grind on and on and on without pause. It had to be wearing down some part of him, like a clock that needs to be wound, but he never stopped for maintenance.

The quiet took hold again. Rochelle coughed into her elbow and grabbed her bottle of water from the wagon. Water was hard to come by. People had had just enough warning that they went into the hoarding panic, buying out most of the perishables and supplies before the infection hit them. It wasn't worth searching the houses in nearby towns for supplies – not for the risk of attacks, traps set up by those who experienced the screaming bouts of paranoia before their deaths, and the starved attack dogs roaming the streets and lurking behind privacy fences. They had what they needed and little else.

Risking a glance, Ellis saw that Nick had checked out again. His face was serene as he watched the approaching horizon. A cold, painful chill cramped in Ellis's stomach. He'd lost this, lost his chances. "Overeager" – that was what Nick had called him, laughing in the dark. Probably he'd say that Ellis needed to know when to hold and when to fold. He'd gone in for the kill too early. But how was he to know?

Now he'd never have that chance again. Nick was as cold and singular as a glacier. He had no more kisses laid out with Ellis's name on them.

"Hey," Ellis began quietly, though he hadn't yet planned on what he was going to say but simply feeling the desperate urge to make some sort of connection, "did I ever tell you 'bout the time my buddy Keith almost married this _awful_ girl named Suzy, and I was all like –"

Nick looked at him and opened his mouth to snap, and then he backtracked and did not speak. His eyes were brilliantly green against the robin's-egg blue of the sky.

Something in Ellis's imagination saw Nick's pace falter. But no, his stride was as even and perpetual as ever.

Ellis kept talking. "So I was all like, you know, I tried to talk him out of it. I ain't never said nothin' bad about a lady before, but I told him right what I thought – she was a stone cold hussy, and a mean one at that. She's one of those ladies who is kind of like those little dogs, you know… They're scared of everythin' and they sometimes just turn mean for no good reason and bite you with their tiny little teeth. I hate those suckers. You can't toilet train 'em for shit and they spook at damn near everythin'. And that's what I said to Keith, that she'd turn him right inside out and he'd be payin' for her tuition while he lived out of a box. And mind you, Keith came from a family that was so rich they had like, a guy who mowed their lawn – as like, his _job_ – but then after they figured out what he was up to with Jeremiah they sorted him out right quick and even though we was workin' together he wasn't makin' nearly enough money to be puttin' his girl through school like she was wantin'. He hadn't had his own house for like, two years before he settled in with me in my trailer. I mean, I love my Ma and all but once I'd saved enough money I was out on my own."

Now he'd lost complete track of what his story was about. To cover for himself, Ellis laughed a little uneasily and threw Rochelle a look. She smiled at him.

"What about this Suzy girl?" she asked, guiding him back on track.

"Oh, right. Thanks, Ro. So anyway, I told Keith that and he figured I was just gettin' jealous of him. He went to Dave for a second opinion and Dave, you know, he's what some folks call a mediator. He tossed out some Bible verses left and right and pert soon Keith wasn't sure what they were arguin' about. That's Dave's way. He don't like fights. He ain't never tangled with nobody in his whole life, except that one time when his Mama died. So Keith goes to see his girl, and Suzy… you know, she's got her eyes on this big dress that she's got to have. I ain't never heard of a dress bein' that damned expensive. You give my Ma twenty dollars worth of white fabric and five dollar's worth of glass beads and you got the exact same dress, I promise you – but that thing was like, I don't know, shit. A _million_ dollars or somethin'."

Nick made a quiet noise in the back of his throat, something between a laugh or a sound of dismissal. The corner of his mouth was quirked into a subtle smile, so Ellis kept talking. His words seemed to speed the landscape along, as if they could somehow cover more ground this way.

"Keith and Suzy had a big old argument right in front of everybody. You know, he was only marryin' her anyways cause she said she was pregnant, which – would you know it – that turned out to be a big red lie. Keith thought he done it cause he was drunk at this party Jeremiah had when he moved up to Vermont. But I guess as it turns out she only mistook his truck for her brother's truck and she only got naked cause it was in the middle of July. You bet there was a big damn fit on that day. Anyway, she let Keith know that she wasn't really pregnant and that pert near crushed him. And then she called him all sorts of things, and that crushed him more. Then she busted right out of there without her dress or nothin'. And I guess somebody canceled the wedding cause it never happened, and once the pastor died I figured, well, there ain't no way it's happenin' at _that _church anyhow."

"Why couldn't they get married at that church just cause the pastor died?" Coach asked, coming out of his stony silence. The pain medication was making his words slow and heavy.

"Well," Ellis replied, grinning at the memory, "the pastor died of a heart attack while he was lightin' the candles. The candles fell over and caught the tinder and set the whole damn place on fire. Burned that sucker straight to the ground."

Rochelle laughed and then clapped a hand over her mouth to silence it. The sound rang sour over the flat, dead valleys separating them from the next city over.

Nick slowed down, just a little; Ellis knew because suddenly they were side-by-side again. When Ellis looked over for confirmation, Nick didn't look at him, but instead spoke in a low, rhythmic voice that soothed an unrecognized sense of urgency in Ellis's body. The tension in his muscles went out and he found that keeping pace with Nick wasn't so difficult after all.

"That reminds me of my ex-wife," Nick said. He lit up a cigarette and held it daintily between two fingers, like a woman would hold it. "You don't want to hear about it, though."

"I do," Ellis blurted, and then didn't have the sense of shame to retract it. "Go on and tell us about it."

"Yeah, Nick," Rochelle chimed in. "Why don't you tell us about your beloved ex-wife?"

"You're a laugh riot," Nick sneered at her, though there was no real malice in it. From the way he looked at her, it was clear that he realized it was his turn to push the wagon; but if she wasn't saying anything about it, neither was he. "All right, I'll have some storytime with you kiddies. Doesn't matter, anyway, I guess."

"Yes!" cheered Ellis.

Nick built up a few more steps before the beginning came to him. His legs moved independently from his body, just moving on as his memories swam backwards. "I spent damn near every penny I had on that ring for her. It was a rookie mistake. I managed to convince her that a shotgun wedding was all the rage, though. Cookie was a smart kid, but sometimes she got so busy acting dumb that she actually got dumb. She always had the upper hand though, I think. Shit, this is weird to talk about."

Just like that, he shut down. He took Rochelle's place as the wagon-pusher and Ellis fell into step beside him. Rochelle took sentry from Coach, machine gun slung casually across her shoulder. She sang a quiet round of "Camptown Races" before the thick mugginess in the air swallowed her spirit up in its hot fist.

"Christ, it's hot," Ellis whined. He wanted to dump a bottle of cold water over his head, but what little water they did have was banned for use for the next five miles and it was warming up as the minutes passed anyway.

"Were you ever going to finish your story, Nick?" Rochelle asked. "It's better than this awful quiet."

Nick didn't answer for a while. He glanced at Ellis, who smiled at him encouragingly, not sure what else to do.

"All right," Nick muttered. "It can't hurt."

A shadow passed over the black line of the road. A vulture swung wide and made for a patch of brush to the left. A corpse there. Human or otherwise, no one cared to investigate.

"We were in Las Vegas at the time, hitting up a few small casinos. You don't hit up the big places. They keep tabs on you and the staff are harder to swing. So, I told Cookie she could pick the place. There wasn't any singing Elvis or anything, just this creepy motherfucker with this… heinous moustache. It was supposed to look like a church but you could taste the grease there from the Chinese restaurant it used to be. Whole place stank to high heaven, but Cookie was happy. I guess some things are enough."

"Isn't that sweet," Coach jabbed, but instead of biting Nick only smiled. His pace never faltered, not even for a second.

"She went off to a strip club – or at least that's what she said – and I roamed the strip looking for cheap scores. I passed by the chapel again on my way to grab some dinner when this ambulance pulled up. They loaded the fake priest into it. He'd died and I figured life is full of coincidences. You want to know what happened? He choked on a hot dog." Nick grinned a terrible, giddy grin – just for a split second. And then it was gone again, like a grim mirage.

"Well ain't that just a small world," Ellis marveled despite himself. "When did all that happen?"

"August. Sometime in August."

"Wow! Ain't that a _bitch_. My priest died in August, too. On the 12th."

"That's right. It was the 12th," Nick said. "Cookie wanted to get married on the 12th because that was the day her own mom got married. Shit tradition."

They looked at each other.

"You're shittin' me right now, ain't you?" Ellis said, trying to smile, but he was spooked.

Nick didn't answer, and that was tell enough.

"Weird," Rochelle said. "That's just weird."

"Nothing weird about it," Nick grumbled. "It's just a coincidence. It's not like August 12th is fucking Priest Armageddon Day."

Ellis's turn to push the wagon came. Nick took sentry. They were separated from each other and the conversation waned into nothing. Ellis supposed he deserved it for trying to regain that ground of friendship, of something more. He felt more distance than ever, but that only fueled his determination.

For the first time in several hours, Nick pulled the trigger on a slobbering young woman crawling through the ditch. She was near the end of her life, anyway, and when her head burst open the air was filled with the rich smell of decay.

"Didn't want her coming up behind us," Nick said to Rochelle's pale face.

Even then, his pace never slowed, never shifted.

* * *

The sun started its descent towards the earth. Ellis took sentry and kept alongside Nick, who kept looking at him irritably.

"Me," Ellis said suddenly, "I ain't never been married. Me and girls, we ain't just ever clicked."

Nick rolled his eyes. "Back on this topic? Fuck, Ellis."

"I just think it's plum strange, that's all."

"Nobody else in the goddamn universe cares except for you."

"I don't mean to frustrate you none, but you ain't got to yell," Ellis sulked. "Sorry. Didn't mean to set you off. Sorry."

"Ellis, don't sulk," Nick said. He sighed and pushed a hand through his hair, which had gone frizzy in the humidity. "Hey, I wasn't yelling at you, okay?"

"Okay." Recognizing this for the lopsided apology that it was, Ellis smiled. He slugged Nick gently on the shoulder and for the briefest moment, a look of horrified surprise was on Nick's face; then, gracefully, he winced as if in pain and muttered, "Dummy." But the lightness in his eyes betrayed him. Ellis felt the warm, pleasant feeling of victory.

All of this time, Nick's pace never changed. One foot in front of the other.

"You know I'm sorry, right?" Ellis asked.

Nick looked at him, eyebrow quirking, but he didn't say anything.

"I said, I'm God-awful sorry. I'm a fool sometimes, my Mama says."

"Not so much as you think, kid."

Ellis worked up a smile. Before Ellis could gauge his reaction, Nick turned away. Maybe he was hoping that it would all be over soon. Maybe he was ashamed, full of regret. They were more likely than the wanting Ellis wanted to see in him.

They talked about other things for a little while – slow, circling conversations that involved more of Ellis telling stories and Nick pretending to ignore him. Rochelle and Coach murmured to each other, staying out of the conversation, sensing by some unspoken signal that they were not welcome in it. Though they gave no sign of it, Ellis couldn't help but wonder if they'd heard them, Nick and Ellis, on that awful wonderful night. He wasn't sure he could bear the embarrassment.

Things were comfortable for a while, except for the steady throbbing in Ellis's feet. And then it began to rain.

It wasn't one of the heavier, meaner rains they sometimes experienced in Georgia. It was a sweeping, persistent drizzle that pushed against them and drenched them thoroughly in lukewarm water. Rivers built up in the gutters and streaked past on either side.

Ellis turned his face up into it and stuck out his tongue to catch raindrops. He grinned and laughed. Nick scowled and mumbled something about this suit being dry-clean only.

"Ain't it nice?" Ellis asked him. He received a stony glare in response and for some reason this made him laugh all over again.

"Miserable," Nick said.

"I kissed my first girl in the rain," Ellis commented.

"I don't want to hear about it."

"What for? Ain't jealous, are you?"

Breaking his dignified façade, Coach guffawed at the zinger.

Nick fixed Ellis with a bottle-green stare and said, "If I wanted a first-hand account, I'd ask your sister myself."

"Aw, come on," Ellis whined, but he had been put back in place. He dragged his feet across the wet asphalt unhappily. "If that ain't the oldest joke in the book with you."

Nick smirked to himself. He seemed to glide.

"Her name was Lou-Anne," Ellis said quietly. "I didn't actually like her, but I did it on a dare."

"Ellis."

"She was too pretty for me. She could of been a princess, you know? And she caused a riot about town cause her Ma was a white lady but her Pa was black. Just wasn't usual, is all. Anyhow, I…"

A shape lurched from a cluster of nearby trees and Coach calmly dispatched the dazed zombie. His head made a muted popping noise before he hit the dirt and lay there still. Coach made a soft noise of approval before reloading.

Ellis waited for the ringing in his ears to subside before speaking again. "Keith made me do it, to get back at me for settin' his pet cat's tail on fire. Like I said, me and girls mix about as well as toothpaste and orange juice. She slapped me after, but not before I got her straight on the mouth. Girls are damn soft, you know? Like pillows."

Even if he was trying to appear unaffected, Nick couldn't hide the way he kept his hands in his pockets, the way his shoulders were slightly hunched. It wasn't fair of Ellis to assume jealousy, not yet – but he felt triumphant.

"I ain't never had a better kiss since," he added.

"Not ever, huh?" Nick asked, and though his tone was casual Ellis read that line just fine.

"Nope. Some folks even kiss like cold fish and go runnin' off thinkin' they pulled somethin' over on somebody."

"I hate this goddamn rain," Nick replied.

Ellis wanted to touch him, but knew he couldn't. He drifted back until he was walking alongside Rochelle. Up ahead, Nick kept that infuriating, constant pace.

* * *

The rain kept up for an hour or so. Rochelle complained about her jeans chafing. Ellis became aware of a steamy kind of sensation in his boxers, and stripped off his overalls to allow for better breathing room.

"I don't want anything getting moldy," he explained when Rochelle looked at him with encroaching horror.

"At least put your shirt back on, Jethro," she said, not unkindly.

Sulking, he obeyed. When he came alongside Nick again as sentry, Nick gave him a scathing look up and down his pale frame. It was the first time he had seen quite so much of Ellis in the daylight; Ellis felt like the skeleton-like teenager he had once been, and fell back again.

"One time," Ellis began to cover up his unease, "my buddy Keith kept lickin' toads to see if they would make him get stoned like he seen on TV. Most of them seemed to taste awful bad and one of them made him right sick, but ain't none of them made him hallucinate or whatever. Except one bit him once, on like, the inside of his mouth and he had to go to the doctor and –"

"Ellis," Rochelle chimed in sweetly. "I'm getting a migraine, honey."

Ellis donned his pants once more so that he could walk alongside Nick again. Nick's shoes made squelching noises with every step, but the perfect rhythm made it easy to tune out.

"Miles and miles and miles," Ellis said in a pensive tone. "We been walkin' miles and miles, and we still got miles and miles to go."

"We're more than halfway there," Nick replied. His voice was steady and he seemed to have lost his peripheral vision. "That wasn't optimism, by the way. That was a statement."

"You don't much turn up happy facts," Ellis said. "Sometimes you're damn aggravatin' when you're right."

"Which is all of the time." Nick grinned cheekily but Ellis wouldn't bite, not this time.

"I guess you just always know what's best, except when you don't. Then shit like this happens."

"What the hell? You're not trying to blame this whole zombie apocalypse on me, are you?"

"No. Ain't what I meant." Ellis put his hands in his pockets to stop himself from fidgeting. He ended up fidgeting anyway and he pulled his baseball cap over his eyes to block out the incriminating yellow glare of the setting sun. Between his moments of lucidity and eloquence, like now, Ellis felt sweet joy. Something about this clarity, this sense that he had lost something dear, made him feel sober.

It was quiet for a while. Nick tried to light a cigarette and then, finding it too soggy to smoke, cussed and became more irritable than ever. He flicked his lighter open and shut, just to watch the little belch of flame. After several minutes he said quietly, "We all make mistakes, Overalls. Lemonade from lemons."

"I like people, but I ain't fond for many folks, you know," Ellis answered. Something in his words seemed to reach Nick on some basic level; he looked over with softer eyes, astonished. Ellis let himself fall back, losing those flecks of green to the greater landscape. They both kept walking.

Rochelle patted Ellis's shoulder and gave him some fruit snacks. Their crusted sweetness made Ellis's stomach churn and pucker as if he would be sick, but he ate them anyway.

* * *

After another four miles, Ellis spoke up again. "If I ever get married, I think it'll be on August 13th. That way, the priest has like a full year to keep on alive, you know?"

"That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard," Nick sniped. He didn't even turn around.

Rochelle fired into the distance. The sound startled everyone into silence. There was a puff of black smoke from behind a line of fence.

"Damn things," she whispered.

Coach shook an antibiotic pill into his trembling hand and swallowed it. The conditions in the cities were utterly unsanitary, with the dead and the sick lying out to rot, all of the food spoiling and the rats repopulating with vigor. The situation got even worse when running water became scarce. Coach had been taking the pills ever since he'd started up with a steady fever and cough, which were luckily gone now.

On the night it had seemed to be so dark, so hopeless, Ellis had laid himself open. Now seeing those wounds heal with the thin threads of hope, he wondered if it had been worth the aftermath.

Nick wouldn't look at him.

* * *

More walking, more endless expanse of black road. Ellis was a fit man, without question the strongest of everyone there, and his entire body had taken on a slow, faint throbbing that would grow to blossoming agony very soon. Nick showed no outward signs of pain but Coach was limping badly and Rochelle kept stopping to ease her cramps. Ellis wished sorely for a motorcycle.

"Man, I wish we had motorcycles," his mouth said without him.

Nick raised an eyebrow. "You ride motorcycles? No, never mind, forget I asked." His voice pitched lower but Ellis heard it anyway: "Figures you of all people would have a fucking bike fetish."

The sun was beginning to slip below the line of distant trees. The sky took on a sighing, pale color and then went dark. The insects stirred. Shadows moved in the deeper blackness. Although Nick wanted to keep moving, the others felt nervous to be enveloped in such blackness and opted to stop off in the town a mile and a half to the west.

"We can get to the next city before noon if we leave early," Rochelle said when Nick balked. "Coach needs to rest and I can't shoot in the dark anyway."

Nick complained until Ellis quietly muttered something about upsetting the balance. Nick shut up after that.

They found an abandoned house that was still in relatively good shape. They polished off many of the supplies in the pantry and settled into a study in the back, where two of the windows were covered by bookshelves and the third had shutters over it. They laid down on the floor after securing all of the doors and fell asleep – except for Ellis. He lay awake, staring at the unfamiliar ceiling and counting the seconds in the stepped breathing of his companions. He felt naked and cold.

As a little boy, he used to wake up every night at 3:00 like clockwork, usually from nightmares. He tried to tough it out, alone in his dark bedroom, but in the end his fear won out and he would pad barefoot to his mother's room. He would curl up beside her in the comforting heat of her bed and fall back asleep without dreams at all.

That was no longer an option now. His mother – if she was still alive – was somewhere far away. Ellis had looked up and down for her on that first desperate, abysmal day of escape, and she was nowhere to be found. The lack of blood in her house boded well for her, however. She must have gotten out. She had always been a cleanly woman and somehow the thought of her dying in a house stained with her blood seemed sacrilegious.

The need for that comfort was strong in this bleak time. As he had before just a few nights ago, Ellis whispered into the dark, "Are you still awake?"

Nobody answered. Ellis half expected to feel Nick's hot, smooth palm slipping across his stomach again, to feel the stale blast of his breath. There was only the cool, stagnant air of a house that was not his own. Loneliness gnawed at his insides. "Are you still awake?" he whispered, just a breath now, expecting no response. Even if Nick was awake, he would not answer. He would not answer, not this time.

* * *

In the early morning hours, the owners of the house woke up. They were infected and angry at the intrusion, or that was how it seemed when Ellis woke to being dragged out the door by a leathery tongue around his neck. He couldn't get enough air to scream, and already the world was hazy and darkening around the edges, narrowing into a fuzzed point where there was only the sound of his heartbeat. His tongue seemed to fill his mouth. The rug ran against his back until it burned.

He couldn't suffocate here with his companions sleeping in the same room. Ellis lashed out at random before he finally struck an end table by the door, upsetting a vase of dead flowers straight onto Nick's head.

"Ow! What the fuck!" Nick yowled, bolting upright and waking the others. It took them all a moment to realize what was happening and leap into action.

The rifle blast in the narrow space made Ellis's ears ring. The smoker burst, filling the air with bitter spores; Ellis hit the ground and writhed in belated agony. His throat throbbed and ached and swelled. He worked up enough air to scream hoarsely, squirming in the hallway, clawing back to his feet. The lack of oxygen hit his brain like a five-pound brick and he was back on the floor, waiting for his vision to return, heaving for breath. He coughed once, twice and then vomited thinly onto the floor. The acid burned his throat.

"Oh, God," he moaned. "Shit, fuck, son of a bitch…"

That was going to leave a nasty bruise, no doubt about it. Even his ears ached from the pressure.

Then something hissed to his left. A woman staggered around the corner. Her shirt was drenched in blood, both old and knew. Suddenly the smell of decay was overwhelming.

And there were more. He could see their faces in the windows. Some crawled over the busted glass and bled freely from their wounds. Distantly, Ellis heard the roar of something – a charger, maybe, or one of the bigger, nastier ones that were nearly impossible to put down. Perhaps the lights had drawn them, the sound of Coach's sleep-talking, perhaps the smell of food. But there were a hundred of them out there, more. There was the telltale thump of their fists against the sides of the house, searching for a weak spot, a way in.

Ellis whooped in a deep breath through his injured windpipe and screamed. Nick got a grip on a strap on his overalls and dragged him back into the room, kicking the door shut.

It wouldn't hold them, the zombies. They came for him, hearing him now; they beat against the hollow wood and shrieked their answering cries.

Rochelle, weeping, was struggling to load her shotgun. "Can't take this shit anymore," she kept whispering over and over. "I can't take this shit anymore."

The window behind them shattered and a dozen bleeding hands poured through. Ellis tasted gunpowder, the coppery-sweet spray of blood.

* * *

"Are we ever even going to make it?" Rochelle asked. "Do you think there's any safe place anymore?"

Ellis didn't want to think about grim thoughts like that. Things were easier with small distractions, storytelling, dreams of kisses. He put his cap on and pulled it over his eyes. He walked an acceptable distance behind Nick, trying to match him footstep per footstep. He'd read once that people perfectly attuned to each other could do that without thinking about it. It seemed like the more he tried to match Nick, the more he fell out of step. He couldn't keep pace.

"We have to keep hope, baby girl," Coach told Rochelle comfortingly. He put on a smile. He might have made a wonderful father, Ellis believed – though Ellis would know nothing about fathers, personally.

"What are we walking for?" Rochelle muttered. "Another dead city?"

"They'll be there," Ellis said firmly. "They've got to. They've got to know there's more of us folks out here. We'll keep walkin' until we find a safe place."

"So bright and sunny, Ellis," she said fondly, and started to smile. The grip on her gun loosened just slightly. The alien darkness in her evaporated again. "You always see the bright side, now, don't you?"

Ellis turned to Nick, who usually had something miserable to say at this point. Nick stared him down – not at his eyes but at some ambiguous lower zone on Ellis's face, like he was reluctant to make eye contact. Ellis felt his face burn.

"You've got to hope for something, I guess," Ellis said.

Nick flicked his lighter open and shut. "What if God doesn't deliver, huh?"

"It's called havin' faith, Nick."

"I have no faith in people."

"Nor much do I, I guess, anymore." Ellis stuck his thumbs in his belt loops and fell back.

Nick took step after step, as if he had never stopped walking, not even in the night.

"Here," Coach said, coming up to Nick and thrusting a weapon into his hands. "You be sentry, now, boy."

Most of them were grateful for Coach's distraction. It diffused the inevitable debate between the two younger men, which would have resulted in a combustion that they simply didn't need right now. Rochelle sighed and took a swig of water.

"I think you're an excellent sentry, Coach," Nick deadpanned.

"I'm too hot and tired for your sarcasm right now," Coach said primly, and fell back again.

Scowling, Nick took point. Accordingly, Ellis pushed the wagon, which was becoming successively lighter with each passing mile. The next city wasn't far off, now – and if the signs didn't point out the closing distance, the growing number of stray zombies did. They began to appear slowly at first, just wandering dumbly along the shoulder of the road or sitting in the grass absorbing their last quiet moments of life. Then, as evidence of car wrecks and stalled vehicles began to pepper the roadway, they became a more common event. They weren't a cluster yet. There was rarely more than one at a time and the intervals between them were reasonable so far. Still, soon they would want to make all three walkers sentry, instead of just one.

"I really miss waffles," Ellis said in a low voice as he pushed the wagon. "My Ma used to make this special kind with strawberries in it. I ain't had a waffle since God knows when."

"No one wants to hear your whining, Ellis," Nick said.

"I ain't whining," Ellis whispered. "What are you so ornery for? What have I ever done to you, anyway?"

"Fuck. Never mind."

But Ellis felt the boil of anger in the pit of his stomach. It leapt to his throat and burned him. Black words oozed from his mouth and he couldn't stop them. When he felt things, he felt them powerfully – and he always had. "You ain't got no right to be turnin' on me when it's you who goes round hurtin' other folks."

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

"Things are always prettier in the dark, ain't you heard that saying?"

Nick leveled his gun level with Ellis's chest. Ellis halted the wagon, staring down the barrel. "Hey, hey, now!" Rochelle barked, but her voice was slow in Ellis's ears. And then Nick pulled the trigger hard.

Ellis heard the concussion, and that was how he knew that he had not been killed. He turned his head, feeling the whoosh of air past his stomach. The bullet struck a hunter streaking towards him; his momentum carried him even in death and he struck the pavement, sliding forward, leaving a crimson skidmark in his wake.

"Holy shit," Ellis wheezed. He put a hand to his chest to feel that he was still alive.

Nick smiled.

"What the hell was that for? Damn near scared me half to death!" Ellis yipped, more startled than upset.

"You're welcome. Shit."

"You almost shot me!"

"Yeah. But I didn't."

"You're some kind of sonofabitch," Ellis mumbled, but he was put back in his place. He laughed a high, nervous laugh and resumed pushing the wagon. To fill the awkward silence, he changed the subject. "One time, me and Keith tried to paint the outside of the trailer with paint ball guns, what cause we figured you know, paintin' takes so goddamn long and it would be more fun anyway to just shoot the sucker all up. And I thought it'd work fine, but we figured out quick that those paintballs were, like, denting the outside of the trailer! So Keith had to –"

Nick sighed, rolling his head on his neck. "Ellis."

"- and then of course it all caught on _fire_ so then –"

"Ellis."

"- I ain't never seen a cat so mad! Just big jets of –"

"Ellis."

"– _everywhere_, man it was bad –"

"Ellis!"

"What?"

"Would you please just shut up?"

Ellis shook his head, feeling heat spread across his cheeks. "You almost killed me."

"No, I didn't." Nick scowled. Even when he was arguing, his perfect pace never shifted. "There was a zombie behind you, what did you want me to do?"

"That ain't what I'm talking about."

"No! I _know_. I know that's not what you're talking about. Fuck!" Nick jerked his gun irritable in Ellis's direction. "You think I don't know?"

Ellis had no answer. He pushed the wagon. "Keith always said that I'd hit love too hard," he murmured. "Probably he was right. He knew things."

Nick's steady pace stopped then for the first time. He stood still on the street.

The others kept walking.

* * *

They reached the city at last. In some ways, it was a relief – and in others, it was terrible. The hard fight came again, rich with the stink of death, gnawing hunger, sleeplessness. Every dark corner was a hazard, a dangerous mystery. And it was worse when night fell, when they had to scramble through the dark street to find a place to bunker down in during the night. There was no safe place. Someone always stayed awake, guarding the exit, listening endlessly to the sound of breathing outside, the occasional scream of a car alarm.

Ellis laid down his gun after his time as guardian, passing it onto a sagging Coach. Those dark eyes were rimmed with purple shadows. Ellis laid his head down on the floor of the storage room of Sadie's Convenience Store. There were no windows all around, except for a strip of high, narrow windows close to the ceiling. He expected that in this silent tomb, he would find sleep fast and hard, but only a restless purgatory met him. When he finally slipped under that first layer of slumber, there were only pale nightmares.

He dreamed of taking sentry again, sitting on the floor of the hotel room as the others slept, watching the door. Nick passing over the gun, Ellis saying, "Good night, sleep tight, don't let the alligators bite" and Nick with a faint smile betraying his front of annoyance. The sound of his breathing so near, the heat of his body, Ellis waiting and waiting, the proximity baffling him, afraid of the darkness outside no matter how he faked bravery and joy. "Are you still awake?" he whispered into the dark, and his answer had been Nick's burning mouth and burning body. Nick had taken him and filled him with a great fire.

Ellis knew how to do it. It wasn't his first time and the nature of the act was basic and primal. Nick taught him to ease the passage with spit and gentle patience, and Ellis missed his chance to wake Rochelle for her turn to watch the hotel room window – and so he let her sleep, curled in the safe cocoon of night and sleep and Nick's warm, slight arms.

Even from birth, Ellis did things first without thinking of consequences. Nick knew the consequences and did things anyway. The dissonance left Ellis in some separate rhythm, unable to meet Nick's pace, unable to keep up.

He was left with a little flame of a memory, a capering step into a deeper, redder commitment.

Ellis fell asleep.

* * *

"If I walk one more mile, I'm going to scream," Rochelle said with alarming calmness as they wandered down another street. The signs pointing the way to the stadium evacuation seemed to loop around and contradict each other, seemed to point them in random, meandering directions that circled back upon themselves. Nick and Rochelle both had bloody blisters on their feet, and Coach's knee had swollen up like a melon. He depended on someone to pose as his crutch at random intervals.

"We've got to be close," Ellis said stubbornly. "We ain't walked this far just to get lost."

Nick had been abnormally quiet these last few days. Where he would have normally inserted some scathing comment, he kept silent, hands in his pockets, eyes fixed on the path ahead. Even Ellis's usual wheedling couldn't shake him, which made Ellis feel bad. Maybe he'd pushed him too much to apologize for that night, to make up for it, to do something. Even the insults were better than this apathy.

"Probably it's somewhere near the middle of the city," Coach said. "I heard that in places like Washington DC, all roads eventually lead to the stadium."

"If you say so," Rochelle said skeptically, but her mood seemed to brighten again. Like Ellis, she didn't like to focus on the negatives.

They lulled into a more companionable silence for a short while, passing between narrow streets into darker, quieter parts of town. The signs of previous life – trash in the streets, graffiti on the walls – made the hairs on Ellis's neck stand on end. There had once been people here. Now there was nothing but death.

"Once we find a helicopter to take us to wherever it's safe," Rochelle said, "I want to take a shower."

"A shower sounds nice," Nick agreed.

Ellis was about to comment when he caught a motion from the corner of his eye, something shifting in the shadows. One of the taller, meaner beasts lurched suddenly from behind the entrance to an antique store, bellowing; Ellis started with a shout and pulled the trigger before he had time to think. The others hollered and opened fire, but it was too late by then. Ellis's shot yawed wide and hit the storefront window, setting off an alarm. A well-placed shot by Coach put the charger out of its misery. It slumped over dead on the curb as the high, whirling shriek of the alarm pierced the sleeping street.

"Shit!" Rochelle was shouting. "Shit shit shit!"

Around the corner came a small wave of zombies. Their bodies seemed to meld together into one singular beast. Sometimes, to Ellis, it almost seemed as if their attacks were purposefully arranged, planned – like the way he'd seen lions set up on television to kill a single stray antelope. The sound of gunfire rang through the narrow space of the street, drowning out Coach's battle yell. It didn't take long for all of them to fall (there were perhaps only two dozen in all), and with the last bullet an emaciated priest with bloody, puckered eyes met his maker. Blood jetted from the open wound at the top of his high collar.

Ellis gave an astonished bark of a laugh. "Did you see that?" he whooped. "Hot damn!"

"They must have come from that church over there," Rochelle noted. "Look at their clothes."

They were prayer clothes. In the pile were a sullen nun and a little girl in a yellow Sunday dress. Perhaps these desperate people had come to pray in their final hours – or had come to seek sanctuary. The priest jittered with the aftershock of nerves, pale hands skittering across the pavement, and then was still.

"Got him good," Ellis commented, feeling high again with the thrill of survival. "Poor bastard. Guess for him it was August 12th."

Behind him, Nick busted up laughing. Ellis had never heard anything like it, and for a moment the sound was foreign to his ears. He turned around to see it, smiling – and then as quickly as it had come, it was gone. Nick arranged his features into that usual blank slate.

"We should move on," he said. His eyes met Ellis's steadily and filled him with a familiar, empty heat.

Ellis lingered behind the others, just a little bit. He looked up at the sky and found no clouds today.

* * *

They knew something was wrong when they came upon the stadium from the west and found little resistance or sign of security. Though the tide of zombies was thinner, they still stumbled freely about in the abandoned parking lot; some lay dead, cooked by the heat, and some of the ones nearer to the stadium entrance had bullets through their skulls – the best sign they'd seen in days. As they crossed the gray ocean of the parking lot, Coach cupped his hands around his mouth and called out, "Hello! Is anybody still here?" and there was no answer but the sly chuckle of the wind.

Rochelle's hands started shaking. "This can't be happening," she whispered to herself. "This can't be right."

Nick said, "I knew this was going to happen." Smiling grimly, he popped a cigarette into his mouth.

In his dreams, Ellis had believed in the movie-theater ending, that they would walk into a town untouched by the infection, clean and bloodless – that the men and women and children there would smile and receive them, and that a purring little bus would be sitting on the corner to pick them up and take them to a warm, sweet island in the Atlantic where there were no zombies at all. Keith would be there, alive and well despite the car accident and those bloody, black minutes where Ellis could remember nothing but the need to run and run and run, the hysterical screaming of the zombies giving chase. His Mama would be there, too, and others like them, those who had survived and found a haven, good people, safe people. Ellis knew that sort of thing was impossible, but it had still given him enough hope to push on.

This destitute stadium with bodies scattered in a path towards its entrance spoke of no rescue, not today.

"We ain't going to know until we go and find out for ourselves," Ellis's mouth said. He turned on his smile. "Come on."

They walked across the rest of the parking lot, sticking close together. And when they emerged through the funnel into the wider bowl of the playing field, they saw nothing at all. Three small tents were set up along the far side of the baseball diamond; one had been blown over in the wind. Some supplies sat abandoned in the grass, clustered against the walls. The place smelled like metal and dust.

"They'll come back," Ellis said. He heard himself but it came from far away.

Rochelle let out a tiny scream and started to cry. "Not again," she whimpered. "How many more times?"

Then it hit him, flushing coldly through his veins. There was no rescue here.

"No," Ellis whispered. "No, it ain't right."

"Stop," Nick snapped.

"No, you!" Ellis exploded back. "You stop!"

"No, shut up!" Nick growled. "Listen for a second, would you? Listen!"

Rochelle shut her mouth, covering it with her hands to keep the sound in; Ellis cocked his head, listening. There was the faint buzz of a radio.

"It's coming from the tent," Nick said, starting forward, and then he was running. He was not as good of a runner as he was a walker. Ellis gave chase.

Under the flap of the upended tent was a badly battered radio. It had been soaked with rain, but luckily the tent had protected most of it. It chirruped and crackled as the reedy voice came through its speakers. "My name is Elise Marceau and this is a recorded message," the voice said. It was the most beautiful phrase Ellis had heard in a long time. "I own a shipping vessel in the town of Johnson, twenty-five miles south of here, in Pendleton Harbor. There is enough room for fifty people if we cram. We will wait for survivors in the dock until November 1st."

Nick and Ellis knelt there in stunned silence, listening to the static. No more words came until the message went back into a loop. "My name is Elise Marceau and…"

Ellis scrambled for the receiver and shouted into it. "Hello? Hello?" but there was no response.

"We don't know if they're dead or not," Nick said softly. "We don't know how long they've been sitting on that dock."

"It's still October 28th," Ellis said, desperate. "We can run and make it. We can make it."

Nick looked at him, eyes dark with worry. "I guess anything is worth a shot," he mumbled.

"Yes," Ellis answered. "Please. Please, we can make it."

"Let's tell the others."

Ellis got to his feet. All of the muscles in his legs screamed and burned. But he still had many miles left to walk. He kept a reasonable distance behind Nick, listening as he explained the new plan. He repeated over and over that it was a long shot, but soon the panic in Rochelle's face washed out with fresh hope.

"We can do it, no problem," she said. That came in clear as Ellis approached. "Right, Ellis?" she asked him. "We can do it."

"Course we can," Ellis answered. The gun felt heavy in his hands.

Distantly, a bird tweeted in a tree. The animals had been spared of the sickness. After the bird, there was a long tortured moan from a beast behind the gate; and nothing after that.

As they departed, walked together in the ghostly streets, Nick fell back and walked alongside him. His face was pale, probably with the cold he wouldn't admit he'd caught, but that paleness made his eyes sharp and green.

"Hey, Overalls," he greeted.

Ellis smiled wide. It made his cheeks ache. He realized vaguely in the back of his mind that, for the first time, he had caught up to Nick; their feet moved in perfect unison, like soldiers in a march, a perfect pace.

When he felt the heat of Nick's hand slipping into his own, it took him several moments to realize what it was. But he didn't dare to mention it. He hoarded each second into his memory like a miser, and from Nick's smug and hidden grin he knew what he had accomplished. And then he let go, but not forever, not this time. The knowledge that this was not over was innately apparent to Ellis, and he felt at peace. They kept together.

It was only another twenty miles to freedom, another twenty miles to walk.

- fin


End file.
